Maybe They Had Bagpipes

O our God, will you not execute judgment on them? For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.  -- 2 Chronicles 20:12

The story of Jehoshaphat being told here is a well-known and celebrated one, preached over and over like the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego or David and Goliath.  Judah was threatened by an invading army of overwhelming numbers.  The king proclaims a fast and prays.  God answers by telling the people of Judah to send singers and musicians out in front of their forces to praise and glorify the Lord.  The enemy is thrown into confusion, and the allies begin to fight among themselves until they are wiped out.  When Jehoshaphat and his people arrive on the scene, all they have to do is pick up the spoils.

 The message is usually that looking toward God, praising Him, and relying upon Him will enable us to overcome otherwise insurmountable obstacles and be greatly blessed.  It’s a good message, and it’s true, but the key to the whole thing, it seems to me, lies in the couple of sentences above which are part of Jehoshaphat’s prayer. 

We do not know what to do … When we are faced with a terrifying, mind-numbing situation, stricken by loss, suffering, in pain, confused and frightened, that is the first thing we need to realize.  None of the options I can come up with are particularly appealing or offer any hope of success.  This set of circumstances, the demands and threats I face are beyond my experience, knowledge and understanding.  What I am supposed to do?

… but our eyes are on you – I don’t have a solution.  I don’t have a pat answer.  The only thing I know to do is to look to You, Lord, to keep my eyes on You, to be ready to take whatever direction You offer. 

In this case, God gave them a specific and somewhat odd instruction.  The “praise team” at church likes to think that the solution is always just to sing “In the Presence of Jehovah” or whatever “powerful” chorus is currently popular.  I would remind them that in another dire situation, also involving Jehoshaphat and a musician, God told them to keep quiet and dig ditches (2 Kings 3).  The point is not to assume that you know what the Lord wants done but to seek Him for what He wants and how He wants to do it this time. 

Sometimes Jesus healed people by speaking a word, sometimes by a touch, one time He spit on a mute’s tongue, another time He spit on some clay and put the mud on a blind man’s eyes.  David was told to use different strategies on different occasions in battling the Philistines.  Samson didn’t carry that jawbone with him everywhere he went. 

That’s not to say that a person can ever go wrong praising the Lord and giving Him glory.  Rather as we serve the Lord and follow Him and are led by the Spirit, we sometimes need to say, "I don’t know what to do, but my eyes are on You," and be ready to trust and obey.

Happy Thanksgiving

Shout triumphantly to the LORD,
all the earth.
Serve the LORD with gladness;
come before Him with joyful songs.
Acknowledge that the LORD is God.
He made us, and we are His –
His people, the sheep of His pasture.
Enter His gates with thanksgiving
and His courts with praise.
Give thanks to Him and praise His name.
For the LORD is good, and His love is eternal;
His faithfulness endures to all generations.

Psalm 100

Cutting the Devil Down to Size

Vindicate me, God, and defend my cause against an ungodly nation; rescue me from deceitful and unjust man. For You are the God of my refuge. Why have You rejected me? Why must I go about in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression?

Send Your light and Your truth; let them lead me. Let them bring me to Your holy mountain, to Your dwelling place. Then I will come to the altar of God, to God, my greatest joy. I will praise You with the lyre, O God, my God.

Why am I so depressed? Why this turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I will still praise Him, my Savior and my God. – Psalm 43

Since there has been some talk of angels on One Cosmos the last few days, I suppose it started me thinking.

Like the Psalmist, I have trouble with trouble. If, like me, you believe in God, then you probably have found yourself wondering, at least momentarily, if God has rejected you. I take things personally. If something goes wrong, I blame myself first. What did I do wrong? Where did I miss it? But it isn’t always my fault. Sometimes it can’t be. So I look around for someone to blame. Maybe it’s my wife’s fault. And so I go down the list.

We are told plainly that we do not fight against mere flesh and blood enemies. The Bible has no problem saying that there is an adversary of the Divine, an accuser of the brethren. We shouldn’t use the devil as an excuse, but we should recognize his presence and resist his efforts. In The Screwtape Letters Lewis warns of the two ways to err regarding the demonic. We can become morbidly obsessed with the devil, which is clearly wrong. It is, however, equally erroneous to dismiss demonic influence entirely.

The devil is real. You can call him an archetype; you can say it is a function of the human psyche; you can call it a mind parasite. It is real, and it is an adversarial force bent on destruction. No less an authority than Jesus Christ said that the devil was a liar and the father of lies. He compared him to a thief, coming to steal, kill and destroy. In fact, Jesus spoke about the devil and demons frequently. He told us that the devil not only deceives us but even attacks us physically.

The poet and artist William Blake did not believe that the soul and the body were really separate. He thought the body was a manifestation or emanation of the soul. The philosopher Anaxagoras said, “Appearances are a glimpse of what is hidden.” What happens, what we see in the physical realm is intimately related to what goes on in the spiritual. If that is the case, it is not surprising to find a physical disease or disability result from the enemy’s attack on the soul.

When we find ourselves laboring in darkness and oppression, what should we do? First we should call out to God. Come into the light and understand that in Christ we are released from all Satan’s accusations and indictments. Jesus paid it all. While I must deal with the consequences of my sin, there is no additional redemption in me suffering for my sins. I am no more delivered because I wallow in sorrow and suffer under demonic attack than if I stand upon my salvation in Christ and fight the devil. That is the whole point of Ephesians 6 as Paul tells us to deploy the shield of faith lest we be pierced by the fiery darts of the adversary.

I may chose to endure suffering and hardship, or I may make a sacrifice to benefit another person, but I should give no ground to the devil. God has not rejected us any more than He has rejected Christ the Son. We need not “go about in sorrow because of the enemy’s oppression”. Instead, light and truth can lead us into God presence where we find genuine acceptance and joy. The writer of Psalm 43 touches on one, possibly the primary way to throw back the assault of the enemy, and fully enter God presence: praise.

To me, that has always sounded like pure cornball flakiness. Yet, the longest book in the Bible is the book of Psalms. David, called the man after God’s own heart, with all his faults, was above all a man of praise, a singer of psalms. Before Jesus went up to pray on Gethsemane on the night of His betrayal, He and the disciples sang a hymn. In heaven, the redeemed will sing a new song.

Hey, it’s worth a try.

Hallelujah!